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The Japanese Earthquake

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NEI is posting updates throughout the day on the huge earthquake in Japan (8.9 on the Richter Scale, the fifth largest on record) and especially on the effect it might have on the country’s nuclear power plants. Click here for updates, with plentiful links to more information.

The American Nuclear Society also has a page up. Click here for that. And this page at the World Nuclear Association provides a map showing the location of Japan’s nuclear plants and a lot of other information about nuclear energy in Japan. It also has up a page of news and links about the earthquake.

Please put any good links you find in comments.

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Comments

Johan said…
I was gathering and updating the nuclear power yes please blog continuously through the day today. Most of it is things taken out of English news but some of it is comments in swedish. Here is a google translate link to the blog post

http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=sv&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=sv&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fnuclearpoweryesplease.org%2Fblog%2F2011%2F03%2F11%2Fden-japanska-jordbavningen-och-karnkraftverken%2F

And here is a link to the original
http://nuclearpoweryesplease.org/blog/2011/03/11/den-japanska-jordbavningen-och-karnkraftverken/
March 11, 2011 at 1:58 PM
gunter said…
howdy folks,

a nuclear accident anywhere is a nuclear accident everywhere.

http://www.beyondnuclear.org/?SSLogoutOk=true

gunter
March 12, 2011 at 12:24 AM
TheEngineer said…
The following are good, informative sites:

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS_Battle_to_stabilise_earthquake_reactors_1203111.html

www.anengineerindc.com

http://atomicinsights.blogspot.com/
March 12, 2011 at 9:21 AM
Anonymous said…
Howdy, Buckaroos,

The INES classification for this event is Level 4, which means an accident with local consequences. When it is all added up, that's what it will almost certainly turn out to be. Very unfortuante that the plant was damaged and will take time and money to repair and return to service. Equally unfortunate that its output is now unavailable to support national recovery operations.

And those are the really dire issues right now. You've got something like 9,500 people unaccounted for in that one prefecture. The threat of aftershocks and subsequent tsunamis is still very real.
March 12, 2011 at 1:28 PM
Aaron Rizzio said…
The big take away as I see it from Fukushima Daiichi thus far should be how resilient these old reactor designs are despite the back-up diesel generators being tsunami- flooded and, apparently, the first dreaded LWR hydrogen explosion above the BWR's vapor suppression pool (of course the new reactor designs can rely on natural coolant circulation). This earthquake was reportedly the most powerful in Japan's history and the fifth most powerful seismic event recorded ever; essentially a 1000-year phenomenon and yet there has been no mass casualty event contra the alarums continuously raised by misguided critics.

I would not be equally optimistic regarding the survivability of any on or off-shore wave, tidal, or wind-farm or array of solar collectors and those tasked with maintaining them in the wake of such an earthquake & tsunami.

And, as I'm sure Mr Paul Gunter agrees, we all hope that LWR-fission keeps its perfect radiological human safety record --media reports of people being treated for "radiation sickness" are in fact instances of individuals believed to have been merely "exposed" to elevated radiation levels and evacuated from the site for medical evaluation. 237 people suffered acute radiation sickness (31 acute fatalities) as a result of Chernobyl's RBMK explosion, not meltdown -- and not a LWR.
March 12, 2011 at 3:25 PM
Anonymous said…
Hey Gunter,

I checked out your link, but the articles there seem pretty sparse in facts, and the beyond nuclear website doesn't allow comments. So, I think I'll stay here where open discussion is encouraged!
March 12, 2011 at 6:21 PM
Steve said…
This will be the end of the "nuclear renaissance" in the United States.
March 13, 2011 at 12:18 PM
Anonymous said…
Steve --

Afraid you may be right. I hope everyone enjoys breathing coal-fired arsenic and CO2, and shivering in the dark every time the sun goes behind clouds or the wind dies down.
March 13, 2011 at 2:08 PM
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